Powerpuff Girls L
by Hcobb
Summary: The heroines who defend the city against monsters keep a terrible secret from their friends, their families and themselves, but not from Him.
1. Little girls lost

[The Powerpuff Girls were created by Craig McCracken. Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z was produced by Cartoon Network, Toei Animation, and Aniplex. The L part is from H. P. Lovecraft. The following is entirely my fault and not theirs. -HJC]

Momoko Akazutsumi tuned out Ms. Keane's lecture and turned her head to look out the window of the classroom. She felt unsatisfied with her life. All she did was attend class then go home to do homework and live with her mother and sister. She felt that she ought to have a boyfriend but she somehow never managed to approach the boys she liked. Where did her time go?

Her train of thought slammed to a stop as she heard a buzzing. She looked down at her belt buckle, which had a thick disk attached to it. Why was she wearing such a thing?

A flood of alien memories washed through her mind. Flying through space far from any star. Worlds and places of strange geometries. She clutched at her desk and screamed at the top of her lungs as she struggled to put words to concepts about things that no human had ever seen and survived to report.

A moment later she stopped as a cold calm crystallized in her mind. She was Blossom, champion of justice, and she had a job to do.

Blossom raised her hand, "Ms. Keane!"

"Yes," the teacher looked up from the chalk she had dropped, "You three girls had best report to the nurse's office."

Blossom looked to her side. Her teammates, still in their civilian garb, had also raised their hands. The rest of the class quickly turned away from the three girls and stared down at their textbooks.

Why did they need to make such a fuss, Blossom wondered, surely they could simply ask to be excused, but this way they at least could leave without question.

The three girls walked from the classroom and turned to the stairs. Instead of going down to the nurse's office they climbed up to the top of the stairs and exited out onto the roof. Then they moved to a spot out of line of sight of the other buildings

They faced away from each other, closed their eyes and said something in a language far older than mankind. A moment later they reopened their eyes, but now these eyes looked more like cuttlefish eyes than human, and third eyes of the same kind opened in their foreheads. Their forms expanded, consuming their clothing as they assumed trifold symmetry in strange winged alien forms then collapsed back to their human forms, but now clothed in leotards, skirts, boots, gloves and vests.

Blossom removed the disk from her belt and opened it like a compact as her two teammates watched over her shoulders. She recognized the face shown on the display and addressed the short balding man. "Yes Mayor, what is it?"

"There you are girls. The Second Townsville Bank on the corner of Vegas and Riverboat streets is being robbed!"

"We're on it!" Blossom folded up and replaced the transformation control disk on her belt then leapt high above the school, with Bubbles and Buttercup at her side.

The three girls flew through the air with no obvious exertion. It was as if the law of universal gravitation took no notice of their presence. Once they cleared the school building they accelerated to just over a hundred kilometers per hour and begain to leave streaks of red, green and blue light that faded away a short distance behind them.

Blossom felt a strange unease about the rectangular plan of the city below her. Something about the cubical shapes of the buildings hinted at a hidden danger.

"Is something the matter Blossom?"

Blossom turned to Bubbles and replied back in the same way, without vocalization or other sound. After all they were flying too fast for sound to be a practical means of communication. "No, it's just been a while hasn't it?"

"I wish we could go flying more often. School is boring," Buttercup looked down at their destination and inside it. It wasn't as if she looked in the window or through the material of the roof, but that somehow she looked around the side of the building in some direction she could not name. X-ray vision is neat, she thought, then addressed the other two. "There's the problem!"

Blossom rushed past her and threw the door of the bank open. She took in the situation with a single glance, then focused on the man with a gun in his hand and a ski mask over his head. "Not so fast, bank robber man!"

Startled, the robber shot three times, striking Blossom in the chest.

"Why you!" Buttercup flew up and punched the man so hard in the gut that he stumbled backwards, hit his head against a pillar and dropped his gun.

"Blossom!" Bubbles turned to examine her friend. The bullets had torn through Blossom's vest and leotard and sunk into her flesh. But instead of blood there was just a white pulpy material pushed out around the wounds. Bubbles' gaze went blank for a moment and when she looked back at Blossom the wounds and costume damage was gone, as if the attack had never happened. "Blossom are you alright?"

"Of course I am. Bullets can't harm the Powerpuff Girls." Blossom turned to the police officers gathered outside. "It's all yours men."

The girls floated out of the bank to the cheers of the onlookers then flew back up into the sky.

A tall curvaceous woman traced the path of the three girls from the corner of her eyes. Even from a distance she could not stand to look directly at them.

Satisfied that the girls were returning to their school, she turned to the man who sat behind his desk. "Mayor! How could you activate THEM for a simple bank robbery?"

"But Ms. Bellum, they saved the day didn't they?"

"Yes, this time. But you heard the Professor, they're unstable. The girls are our only line of defense against the monsters. But if we keep pushing them, then at some point they will revert to their true natures and we'll all be doomed."

Ms. Sara Bellum let her mind drift back to the first day she had met these creatures.

"Mayor, one of the students took a video recording of the incident."

"Good, let's see it. I keep getting calls from the parents asking what happened to their daughters."

The two of them watched the tape. The camera jerked around in young hands as it swept over a laboratory from an observation deck above.

"No, tape me. That's what I'm paying you for. This is Himoko's field trip to the Utonium Laboratory."

The camera turned to one girl standing in a group of her classmates.

"Now be quiet class, I think they're about to do something," Their teacher said from off camera.

Himoko pushed her way to the railing and the camera operator followed and filmed over her shoulder as two scientists in protective suits strapped a chimpanzee down in a chair placed in the middle of a ring of strange instruments.

Satisfied, one of the scientists climbed a ladder up to the observation deck and removed his helmet. "Ah, Miss Keane and students. I'm Professor Kitazawa. We're about to run a test of our L-space generator. L-space is a new dimension we've discovered recently that runs on slightly different physical laws than our own universe. We can exploit this difference to generate electricity with no carbon emissions, but we need to test the effects on living beings to ensure safety. Yes, miss?"

One of the students, a blue eyed girl with her blond hair in twin pigtails had raised her hand. "You're not going to hurt the monkey, are you?"

"No, no. Jojo will be fine. He's been through all of this before. We just need to run some long term tests and ensure that there's no side effects." He turned to look over the railing. "Are you ready Professor Lumpkins?"

The suited figure in the lab raised a gloved thumb.

"Then go ahead and start while I explain everything to the students here."

Professor Lumpkins activated some switches and the machinery hummed into operation. Then his control panel exploded and he crossed his arms in front of his face. The chimpanzee shrieked and thrashed against its bonds as a dark rift appeared before it.

"It can't be." Professor Kitazawa stared at the rift for a moment then put his helmet back on and ran for the ladder. He opened a breaker panel and threw some switches, plunging the laboratory below into darkness and silencing the machinery, but the deeper darkness of the rift remained.

"Professor Lumpkins, are you alright?" He reached down to grab the other man's arm, but was tossed aside with a single blow.

Professor Lumpkins ran away from the rift and knocked one of the support columns for the observation deck away as if it were cardboard. Then he smashed through the wall and ran outside.

The part of the deck above the missing column collapsed down and the blond girl fell. Two other girls, a redhead and a girl with short black hair each grabbed one of her hands and were pulled down with her. The trio fell into the rift, which then vanished.

The camera swept back to the chimpanzee who had grown and ripped free of its restraints. It ran away through the hole Professor Lumpkins had made, its shrieks fading into all too human maniacal hysterical laughter in the distance.

The mayor rose from his chair as the tape ended, "Well that cleared up nothing. Let's go see this Professor Kitazawa. He'll either give us some explanation for this or I'll see him arrested for kidnapping, if not murder."

At the Utonium Laboratory a young boy answered the door and invited them inside, "Dad, it's the Mayor."

Professor Kitazawa came out looking much more worn out than he had seemed on the tape. He obviously had not slept in days and his eyes tended to wander to the corners of the room, looking for something that should not be there. "Ah Mayor, and you must be Ms. Bellum? I was just about to call you."

The mayor stepped forwards and glared at Professor Kitazawa. "Do you have some explanation for what happened to the three missing girls?"

"Yes, we're done for now. Girls, there's somebody here to see you."

The three girls walked down the stairs, looking exactly the same as the day they had vanished and even wearing the same clothing.

"What!" The mayor stood slack jawed, "They were here all the time?"

"Girls, this is the mayor of our city and his assistant Ms. Bellum. They are very important people and you should do what they tell you."

"Whatever," Kaoru, the black haired girl, could have passed for a boy in her shorts and cap.

"Pleased to meet you," Miyako, the blond, curtsied.

Momoko, the redhead, said nothing and watched the professor's son as he walked away.

The boy avoided looking at any of the three girls.

Proffesor Kitazawa turned back to the city officals. "Can you see the girls to their homes? Their families must have been very worried this past week."

"Shouldn't we take them for medical examinations?" Ms. Bellum asked.

"No, it would be best if you didn't."

Ms. Bellum saw the look of terror Kitazawa tried to suppress. What was he trying to hide? Best to get the girls away from him and question them about this in private.

Then the professor's son ran into the room. "Dad! I just saw the news. Jojo's on a rampage downtown."

"Yes Ken, I was afraid of this." Professor Kitazawa pulled a cellphone out of his pocket, flipped it open and pressed a button. "Powerpuff Girls we need you!"

The three girls screamed and dropped to their knees. Their expressions blanked for a moment, then they turned to Professor Kitazawa and Momoko asked, "Is it okay?" She nodded towards the mayor and Ms. Bellum.

"Yes, they need to know. You can transform here."

The three girls turned away from each other and said something Ms. Bellum could not understand. Their bodies expanded into two meter tall monsters with three eyes spaced around the upper part of their columns in what could possibly be considered heads and then they shrank down into their usual forms, but wearing matching outfits that differed only in color.

Ms. Bellum noticed that the belts they wore had not changed in the transformation and were the only new items they had added since the tape was made.

The three girls turned again to the professor.

He asked them, "Girls, you heard about Jojo?"

They nodded.

"Please stop him and bring him back here, and then you can go home."

"It's about time!" Kaoru rose into the air then flew for the door with the other two flying after her.

"What was that?" The mayor was helped back to his feet by Ms. Bellum.

"Those are the creatures from the L-dimension who devoured the bodies of the three girls, but apparently their souls were harder to digest. I call them the Powerpuffs because their internal structure is closest to certain kinds of mushrooms, but they have no real relation to any Earth lifeform."

"What have you done?" Ms. Bellum accepted the cell phone as the Professor handed it to her.

"Attempting to find the girls was the worst mistake in my entire life. I should have known that no Earthly lifeform could survive for even one minute in L-space. But now that they're here there's no point in sending them back, because they now know where we are. Pressing the blue button activates the link to our systems here and through them to the transformation control devices on their belts. You should be careful about how you use their superhero personalities because those are unstable artificial overlays on their normal selves."

"Unstable? What happens when they break down?"

"When the creatures assume their normal personalities I imagine that they'll devour us all. And at that point there will be nothing we can do to stop them. So please be careful with the girls and get them back into their ordinary lives. The reinforcement offered by their friends and families is our only hope for staving off our inevitable doom."


	2. R'lyeh rising

Miyako Gotokuji tossed in her sleep. She found herself floating in a strange dark place. It was too dark to see herself, but she could tell that somehow she wasn't really herself, but rather something horrible. And the worst part was that something was crying out something in the distance, some strange almost sound that somehow was her name, but it wasn't, it wasn't.

She awoke in convulsions, almost falling out of her bed, but then a cool calm settled on her and she knew that she was Bubbles, protector of the innocent. She could see that she was in her own room, but she didn't need the light of her Octi nightlight to see this, for she had super vision.

She lay back in her bed and closed her eyes, but she found no rest. There was something out there, something from the L-dimension. She sat up and her belt buckle buzzed. Why did she have to wear such a heavy belt over her nightie? Something about it offended her finely tuned fashion sense, but there was a reason for it, something important that she just couldn't put her finger on. But, at least this way it was easy to stay in touch.

Bubbles unclasped the transformation control disk from her belt buckle and opened it like a compact. She instantly recognized her teammate whose face appeared in the screen. "Hello Miss Blossom, did you feel it also?"

"Yes Bubbles, we're on our way now. Hurry up and get changed."

The screen went black so Bubbles folded the device and returned it to her belt. It was not like Blossom to be so abrupt. She also must be worried.

Bubbles stood and said her transformation phrase. Somehow she never could hear the words as she spoke them. She closed her eyes and felt her body unfold and refold again, like origami. She even had to stoop a bit for some reason, her room suddenly too small for comfort, but when she opened her eyes she could see that the ceiling was still far above her 11 year old head. She was now in her superhero costume. It was something to figure out later, for now the Powerpuff Girls had a mission.

Bubbles crawled onto her bed, opened the window and flew outside, hanging for a moment in midair as she closed her window behind her. Then she was away, climbing slowly to a hundred meters above the ground. She turned in place, then satisfied that she had found the right direction she sped off, leaving a blue streak behind her. Ahead she could see the green and red streaks of her teammates, she'd have to put on the speed to catch up.

Suddenly her teammates came to a halt just in front of New Townsville's city hall tower. Bubbles skidded a little ways forward, then floated back, between and slightly behind the other two.

There was a figure in the gloom. He stepped forwards towards the three girls who floated in midair. They could see as he came into the light that he was a man in a business suit. At over six feet tall he was much taller than the girls, but they had faced much larger foes. He was bald save for his dark eyebrows and his dusky skin seemed to hint to Egyptian descent.

The expression he wore, the air of unquestionable authority reminded Bubbles of the pictures she had seen of pharaohs. But this man could not be a man, for he had too much of the essence of the L-dimension about him. When he spoke his voice had that same unquestionable authority, but his delivery was a tiny bit flat, as if he had never spoken before.

"This is a marvelous dimension you three have found, but why have you not contacted me?"

"Who are you?" It was Blossom who asked. She always took the lead in such things. Buttercup would rather express herself with violence, and as for Bubbles herself, she felt it was best to hang back for a bit and get to know new people better, the better to make a good first impression.

"How can you not know me? For I am your absolute lord and master, N-"

The man said something, but Bubbles could not quite catch it. "What was that, it was Gnarly-something?"

"You cannot even say my name? How extraordinary." The man raised an eyebrow.

"That's because it's a stupid name!" Buttercup was as blunt as always.

"However shall you address me then?" He gazed into the eyes of the young girl who had floated up towards him.

"Let's call him..." Buttercup found his gaze disquieting and so turned to her teammates for support. She didn't like puzzles, better to rely on good old fashioned action to resolve difficult situations. "Him." There it was, a quick and easy resolution.

"Him?" Blossom asked.

"Well you come up with something then," Buttercup made a small kicking motion at the ground that was far beneath her feet.

"Him is fine for now."

Satisfied with Bubbles' usual tie breaking vote, Buttercup turned back to the man. "So what do you want, Him?"

"Why the same thing I always want. To extend my dominion over this realm like all the others."

"We'll stop you." Buttercup curled her small hands into fists. So he was to be a foe rather than a puzzle? That suited her tastes.

"You will? You'll even try?" Him smiled at Buttercup, or at least Bubbles thought it was a smile, put on a face not through a lifetime's experience, but rather a few minutes study on the science of smiles.

"To think I have known you all this time and beyond time and yet you still manage to surprise me, my dear sweet -"

This time not even the first syllable registered with Bubbles, but to Buttercup it was infuriating. It wasn't that she truly heard or understood the word, but she could feel the precise meaning of it. It was somehow a claim deeper than any intimacy and more mocking that the cruelest joke. It was the name of a cherished, loving, content, and ever obedient slave, "That's it, you're going down."

"But what sort of father would I be, if I did not bring a gift for my daughters?" The thing the girls called Him pointed at the bay and the waters roared and parted as a strange shape emerged. It was darker than the night and had irregular shapes on it. Perhaps buildings, huge trees or small mountains, but these shapes twisted in the distance as if they were alive, or perhaps it was the space that twisted around them, unwilling to lie quietly in the presence of such things, "Behold R'lyeh, where Cthulhu stirs from long slumber. The poor thing seems to be hungry. Whatever shall he have for breakfast? Perhaps the bodies and souls of the humans living here will be enough to sate his appetite." Him laughed.

The laughter was also unpracticed and the inhumanity of it settled in Bubble's stomach like bad sushi. As the laughter faded away, a strange phrase came unbidden to her lips, "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh C'thulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." She didn't know what it meant, but she knew it wasn't anything nice.

"Why you!" Buttercup turned back to Him, but the thing that wore the shape of a man had faded with the laughter and even her so-called X-ray vision could not find Him anywhere near, even behind or inside other things.

The beltbuckles on all three girl's belts buzzed, but Blossom was the first to answer. "Professor, is this about that thing in the bay? Yes, we're on it. Come on girls, let's stop Him!" Blossom put her transformation control disk back on her belt then rushed towards the new island, leaving a red streak glowing briefly behind her in the air. The other two followed, leaving green and blue streaks.

The girls circled the island, but were unable to see even a door, then Bubbles saw something emerge from the waters on the shore of the bay, "What's that?" Bubbles pointed towards the strange dark shape that had lumbered to the shore. It was larger than Fuzzy and clearly no animal they had ever heard of, but it was hard to tell as the air seemed to waver around it in the night.

Buttercup flew towards it and took advantage of the longer range of her special attack to strike before the other girls could. Her green eyes glowed red as she directed two intense beams of infrared laser light at the shape. The beams struck near the feet of the shape, causing the ground to explode as if it had been hit by an artillery shell. The shape continued to lumber on towards the towers of downtown.

"I missed! How could I miss?" Buttercup was no expert in any field of science, but she knew instinctively that no object could move faster than light. Perhaps in another decade she could learn in college that while General Relativity prohibits the movement of anything through space faster than light, space itself can be warped much faster than that. Assuming that there still were colleges by then, or even the Earth for that matter.

Buttercup closed to a hundred meters, fired again and missed again. She stopped just in front of it and prepared to fire again, but it grabbed her with a massive claw, breaking her concentration. "Ow! That hurts!"

"Let her go!" Bubbles punched rapid fire at the claw, to no effect. Then the thing reached with its other claw and grabbed her also.

Blossom studied the creature for a moment. It was vaguely humanoid, with two legs, two arms that ended in claws instead of hands, two bat like wings, and a head with two eyes and many tentacles. She counted again, only two claws. She turned and flew away.

"Blossom, you coward!" Buttercup screamed at her teammate, then turned her head as she felt a rancid, slimy breath on her face. The creature had lifted her closer to its eyes and was reaching for her skirt with its many mouth-tentacles. This was exactly the sort of situation that made Buttercup hate skirts.

Not only did Bubbles have her arms pinned to her side, but the pressure of the thing's claw on her chest prevented her from taking a deep breath to use her power.

Out of sight, Blossom turned around a building and broke the sound barrier. Cutting a tight turn at what should have been immense G-forces, she accelerated in the turn. Her hands were outstretched in front of her, her fingers forming shockwaves that passed around her. She completed the circle and came up behind the beast. At the last moment she formed her hands into fists to strike, but somehow the beast was off to the side. With immense effort she shifted course to hit it, settling for a shoulder ram rather than the two handed punch she had intended.

Blossom bounced back from the impact and took twenty meters to come to a halt in midair. The beast released the other two girls and tumbled to the ground.

Blossom took a deep breath and blew towards the beast. She did not know how such a mighty wind could be generated by her small lungs nor where all the water molecules came from, but as the fog from her super breath faded away the beast was revealed to be trapped under a meter thick layer of crystal clear ice. Using the last of her super breath, Blossom formed snow in her right hand to rub on her left shoulder, which stung from the impact she had made on the beast.

"Miss Blossom, you did it!" Bubbles flew up, but stopped short of Blossom. Buttercup shook her head clear then flew up to join formation with her teammates and study the creature.

Under the ice Cthulhu stirred. It did not move much in the confined space around it, but the space itself warped around its presence and the critical spacing and angles that defined the geometry of ice failed.

The girls covered their faces as the ice exploded off of Cthulhu in a shower of tiny crystals.

"How strong is this thing?" Blossom turned to Bubbles, "You try it."

Bubbles nodded and took a deep breath while her two teammates plugged fingers into their ears, for they knew that while Bubbles' special attack might lack the raw power of theirs, it was far more painful to bystanders.

Bubbles opened her mouth wide and an intense dull roar of 300 Hz came forth. She could not explain how she could generate such a loud sound, any more than she could explain any of her other superpowers, but with her perfect sense of pitch she searched for a resonance in her target, her frequency going up and up. Her teammates were not spared when she reached ultrasonics, for they had superhearing also, if not Bubbles' musical talent. As she passed 30 KHz Bubbles thought she heard a response. She dropped an octave lower and intensified her attack.

In the distance dogs and cats howled and the other two Powerpuffs felt like howling themselves.

There was something tricky about the echos. Bubbles put all of her strength into her shout and had it reflected back at her. She clutched her hands to her head and fell from the air.

Cthulhu reached out a claw towards her, but Blossom was faster. She swooped down and snatched her teammate then dropped her off on top of a nearby building, "Are you okay?"

Bubbles couldn't hear anything, but she could read Blossom's concern, so she nodded.

"Wait right here. We'll handle this," Blossom dove down at the monster again.

Bubbles watched the battle from where she sat as her hearing slowly returned.

The other two girls tried repeating Blossom's high speed ram by diving in from opposite directions, but Cthulhu suddenly was a little ways off to the side so they knocked heads with a clunk. They were stunned for a moment, but recovered just in time to fly away before Cthulhu could grab them.

Something was off about the entire situation. Bubbles considered everything that had happened that night, then decided to put her theory to to test. She flew down and landed in front of the creature.

"Bubbles, no!"

Bubbles ignored Blossom and addressed the creature. "Excuse me, Mr. Cthulhu? We like our city the way it is. So could you please go back to where you came from?"

Her two teammates stopped in midair as Cthulhu looked down at Bubbles.

The monster stood for several seconds then it seemed to nod. It turned and shambled back the way it had came.

Bubbles took to the air and watched it from a few hundred meters back. Her teammates flying behind her.

All three girls watched as Cthulhu reached the water, then swam across to his island. The waters churned around the island as it submerged, and then the bay was still again.

Blossom was the first to speak. "How did you. How did you know it spoke Japanese?"

Bubbles realized that she had not been breathing as she took a deep lungful of air. "I don't think it does."

"Then how did you?" Buttercup pointed to the undisturbed moonlit waters.

"It was a matter of tone I think."

"But why would it listen to you?"

"Mr. Him is the total master of his domain, right?"

"Yes, if he's telling the truth." Blossom furled her brow in concentration. "But we don't know where that is? Somewhere in the L Dimension?"

"And the way Mr. Him spoke. It was like Mr. Cthulhu was some sort of pet."

"But why would it obey you?"

"Mr. Him called us his daughters. That puts us on a higher rank."

"So you're saying we are Him's monsters?" Buttercup grabbed Bubbles' forearm.

Bubbles shrugged out of her teammate's grip, "Of course not, but if Mr. Him wants to play his game he has to follow his own rules. Otherwise he undermines his own case."

"But what made you so sure that you could land in front of Cthulhu and he wouldn't hurt you?"

Bubbles turned to look Blossom in the eye as she made her reply, "Because he hadn't so far. He hadn't been fighting us, not for real. Each time he let us get away and waited to see what new game we'd try."


	3. The end of the PPG L

At last it was Kaoru Matsubara's time to be the hero. After the accident at the Utonium Laboratory last year she'd had all those blackouts. She hated how people looked at her, especially her parents. Treating her like she was just a hopeless case, some sickly child. But today she had saved the day. In the final seconds of the match she had scored the winning goal.

She was the only girl on her school's soccer team, but you'd hardly know it from the way she looked with short spiky purple hair and the way she dressed and spoke almost like a boy, especially when she talked about sports.

The after action pizza party had gone on a little longer than planned so it was a little dark out as Kaoru skateboarded up to her house. She frowned as she noticed her house was dark. Surely her family must be home by now? Mom had said that she'd pick Dad up from the airport. Had his flight been delayed? Had something happened? She took out her key and opened the door. Inside she turned on the light and stopped stunned.

Her entire family, Mom, Dad and her two brothers were tied up in the living room. How could this have happened? What kind of crook could beat her Dad, the professional wrestler? She noticed that her family wasn't looking at her, but at something behind her.

She tried to turn, but somebody grabbed her and put a cloth over her mouth. She tried to struggle, but whoever it was had superhuman strength. As she breathed in the vapors from the cloth she noticed that there was something odd about the hand that held it to her face. It wasn't human. She faded out.

When Kaoru awoke she felt a little dizzy so she tried to raise her hand to her head, but she couldn't. She looked down and saw she was clamped down to a metal slab by metal straps on her arms and legs. She glanced to the sides and saw that Momoko Akazutsumi and Miyako Gotokuji, her classmates who had also been in the accident, were strapped down beside her. Looking around she saw they were suspended over some sort of device that a strange figure was working on. "Say what is this?"

The figure looked up at her. It was that mad mutated monkey, Mojo Jojo. He was even more disgusting looking in person than on the news. "Ah Buttercup, so nice of you to join us. I so wanted you to see this before I disposed of you. So that you would see that it was I, Mojo Jojo, who saved the world from the evil that is The Powerpuff Girls."

"Buttercup? You crazy monkey. She may look a little like me, but she flies around in a skirt. I don't do that skirt thing."

"I think you'd look cute in a skirt," Miyako tried to grab Kaoru's hand, but couldn't reach.

"So you three intend to continue your denials until the very end? So be it. Do not worry about your so called families. For you have the word of Mojo Jojo that I shall not harm them. They have suffered enough to put up with horrible monsters in place of their lost daughters. And if you three are not The Powerpuff Girls, then please explain to me why you were wearing their belts?" Mojo pointed at the device he was working on.

Kaoru looked and saw her special belt buckle, and the other girl's also, attached to the device with wires, "Hey give that back." She knew it was important that she always wore it. What was the reason? "That's our epilepsy control belts!" Epilepsy! Kaoru had never been sick a day in her life before she went on the field trip to that lab.

"You cannot fool Mojo Jojo, for I know that without these devices you three are stuck in those forms without your superpowers. The signals from these interesting devices led me right to you three, but the most unusual thing about them is their use of L-Dimension technology. With that I am able to send you three back to where you belong. And so goodbye," Mojo flipped a switch. A strange yet familiar black glow appeared above the device and then the straps holding the girls snapped open and they fell towards it.

"Nooo!" The girls attempted to keep screaming as they entered the L-Dimension, but the geometry would not support it. It wasn't just a vacuum, but a place where the space for molecules of air to exist was poorly defined. They struggled for a few seconds to retain their humanity, then gave up and assumed their true forms.

The entity that had been briefly known as Buttercup, that had eaten the soul of Kaoru Matsubara and taken her place, came to her senses and true mind. She had been known by many names and many designations that could not be truly called names, but the short concise definition she preferred was that she was Green, The Enforcer.

Nearby, to the extent that term had any meaning in the L-Dimension, she sensed that Red, The Devourer, had discarded the form of Momoko/Blossom and that Blue, The Merciless, had discarded the form of Miyako/Bubbles.

Seeing that all was in order, Green led the way. If the L-Dimension, that quantum foam that underlay all the universes, could be said to have a center in space, time, or importance, it was Azathoth. The palace of Nyarlathotep was located just out of reach of the din of Azathoth's strange orchestra. The three landed on one of the balconies of this palace and Green rushed forwards. "Father, forgive me."

The other two kept a small distance, as always amused by Green's devotion yet annoyed by the attention bestowed on her.

"Fear not, for I knew you were not yourself." Nyarlathotep wore the form of the Egyptian the three had called Him. He reached out a hand and patted Green on her equivalent of a head.

"Please, let me make this up to you," She wrapped one of her tentacles around his hand.

"Very well," He ticked her tentacle with his fingers. "Go and destroy humanity's remaining hero in front of them. Let them drink deeply of despair."

"At once, my lord!" Green turned and the other two followed her. They took the quickest and easiest path back to Earth and reappeared a moment after they had left and in the same space.

Once again Green spoke with Kaoru's voice. "Not so fast, Mojo Jojo."

"Impossible!" Mojo looked up at the three.

"I've always wanted to play with a monkey." Blue spoke with Miyako's voice as she wrapped a tentacle around Mojo.

Green gave the equivalent of a shrug, so Blue extended her two other tentacles and reached inside Mojo's body to touch at his heart. It wasn't beating. She had forgotten how fragile these Earth creatures were. In frustration she tossed the corpse aside.

Red grabbed it from midair and ate in one gulp.

"Come, we have a mission." Green flew into the night and the other two followed.

Professor Kitazawa awoke to the sound of his bedroom window opening. He looked up and saw the three bizarre yet familiar forms. He reached into his nightstand and pulled out a revolver, but Green snatched it away before he could point it at his own head.

"Not so fast, Professor Kitazawa." Green examined the gun she held and took a moment to communicate with her sisters. It's a pity that we have to destroy this world.

Do we? Blue asked.

Master will be angry if we don't, Red pointed out.

Let him, Green reassumed the form of Buttercup, teleported the gun back into the drawer, retrieved her disk, made some changes in it. She saw that her sisters had done the same. She turned back to the professor. "We know our true selves now so these things cannot control us, but we'll keep them anyway. When the world needs the Powerpuff Girls call us, but now we must go face Nyarlathotep."

"Nyarlathotep?" The Professor looked down at his empty hand and then back at the three monsters who wore the forms of the girls they had devoured.

"The being we called Him, our former master."

"Can we win?" Bubbles asked.

"Nothing can stop the Powerpuff Girls!" Buttercup replaced the disk in her belt then flew out the window and the other two followed.

They climbed and accelerated and within a few minutes were outside the atmosphere. There was a flash of darkness and they were gone.

Nyarlathotep was not pleased. "Again with this foolishness?" He assumed a form of hundreds of tentacles.

"I guess we're just fools then." Buttercup blasted him with heat vision and climbed away as he reached for her.

Blossom spit out soccer ball sized chunks of ice that Buttercup kicked at Nyarlathotep then used her heat vision to explode just before they hit him.

"You three are planning something. What is it?" Nyarlathotep reached out for Buttercup's mind, but it was filled with a jumble of sport scores. He tried Blossom's mind, but found only memories of the delicious foods of Earth and the men she drooled over. He searched for Bubbles and found her approaching him at the local speed of sound. Her mind was filled with fashion designs and beauty tips, but she was screaming at the top of her lungs. He wrapped his tentacles around himself and rolled with the shockwave. By the time he recovered his senses the girls were gone. "Hit and run all you like little girls, but I know the world you are defending." He reached out with his mind to the coordinates of Earth's Universe.

It wasn't there.

"How very clever of them. Let them have their fun for a while then. It will make it all the sweeter when I bring them to heel."

All over the Earth people of unusual sensibilities stopped for a moment as they felt that something was a little off, then shrugged and went back to their pursuits.

The three girls lay on the grass of a Townsville park and watched the sun rise. Momoko turned her head towards the other two. "Let's not move the world again."

Kaoru crossed her legs. She had the confidence to do so, for unlike the other two, she wore shorts. "It probably wouldn't work a second time anyway."

"I feel bad about Mojo." Miyako sighed.

"Don't worry Bubbles, we can get you another monkey to play with. I bet Blossom is hungry again anyway."

Her two teammates gave Kaoru looks that could have melted lead, if they had been willing to broach her prerogative of heat vision.

She stood, "Speaking of food. Let's all go to our families and have breakfast. I bet they're really worried about us now."

"I don't think Nyarlathotep is our father." Miyako got up and dusted off her skirt. "I think he may have messed with our memories."

"I've had enough of that." Momoko stood. "See you two in school."

And so the three horrible monsters cosplayed happily ever after.

The End.

Epilogue:

Twenty years after we moved the Universe, I met Bubbles in a cafe. Well she was dressed as Miyako at the time, obviously. Same old Blue. She was sitting there in a frilly yellow dress and waved me over.

I took off my sunglasses (purely for style obviously) and put them in my vest pocket. "What's the news? Did Momoko get a new boyfriend?"

"That wouldn't be news, Ms. Kaoru."

"I guess not. She's gone through so many thrills that it's a wonder she hasn't tried bestiality."

"Technically we're not even mammals."

"Point taken. I surrender." I held up my hands. "So what's the big news?" I picked up the cup of tea she had obviously ordered for me.

"Taka-chan is cheating on me."

I put down the cup. "You don't look so upset."

"He's a good man. He deserves children. That's the one thing I can't offer him."

"Not in any good way. So knowing you, this isn't being left to chance?"

"Of course not. I sneaked in and replaced her birth control pills."

"So how is this going to work, with you, him, her and the baby?"

"I suppose I'd best be hit by a truck or something. I haven't worked out the details yet." She looked up at the cafe's TV, which had cut to a news flash. "Why does that hussy reporter always have to chase after monster stories? Taka-chan has already introduced me as his wife, so could you?"

"Let me see if I have this straight. I've got a picnic with Hitomi on one of her rare days off and you want me to cancel out of that so I can go save your rival from certain doom, just so she can steal your husband away from you?"

"If you would please."

"I'll add it to the tab you owe me, but all this sneaking around, messing with peoples' lives, doesn't it remind you of somebody?"

"I only do it to help people."

"Yeah, I bet Nyarlathotep started out the same way."

Miyako just looked down at the table and said nothing.

There it was. I had used the N-word on her. We both knew that canceled out what she owed me, and I'd be busy the next few years working off this new debt as her errand girl.

I walked out of the cafe, turned a corner, switched outfits and leapt into the sky. I had a monster to go beat up. I didn't want to slow down enough to talk on a phone so I tapped into the cellphone network electronically and told Hitomi I'd gotten called into work. That wasn't a power that Buttercup was supposed to have, but time was pressing.


End file.
